News, notes, and anecdotes on the Fort Wayne TinCaps

Dragons Roll, The Physics Road, Wrong Number Etiquette

On Monday night the TinCaps returned home to Parkview Field for their home game action in eight days. However, the result wasn’t as they would’ve liked with a 9-3 Dayton win in the series opener.

Fort Wayne starter Frank Garces struggled with his control, issuing six walks over his 4 1/3 innings as he fell to 0-1 in his first three outings. Kyle Gaedele provided some early offense with a solo homer to straight away center field, and also clocked a double. The TinCaps got multi-hit games from Zach Kometani and Matt Colantonio, as well.

The Dragons entered Monday night’s game hitting just .192 over their last two series, but the bats sprung to life for nine runs on nine hits, and six of the nine runs came in the final three innings against the TinCaps bullpen.

In today’s TinCaps Report Podcast, you can hear highlights from last night’s game, and post-game comments from Manager Jose Valentin and outfielder Kyle Gaedele:

The loss makes four straight for Fort Wayne, which which will try and snap the skid tonight with Adys Portillo on the bump. He’ll be opposed by the broadcaster-friendly righthander Radhames Quezada, First pitch at Parkview Field is at 7:05.

WALK THE PHYSICS ROAD

My high school physics teacher, Mr. Cutaia, would always use that catchphrase, maybe to try and make us confused high-schoolers interested in physics, because he had stolen a line from Green Day, and applied to to the world’s most confusing science. Look, I was lost in chemistry the day they told me I couldn’t play with the hot plate or bunsen burner anymore, think I had a chance with things like this?

‘Dmitri Krioukov, a physicist at the University of California, San Diego, was pulled over for jumping a stop sign. The fine would have been $400. But Krioukov tried something that most traffic courts probably haven’t seen: He wrote an academic paper to argue why he ought to be found not guilty. Its title: “The Proof of Innocence.”

Mr. Krioukov writes:

“We show that if a car stops at a stop sign, an observer, e.g., a police officer, located at a certain distance perpendicular to the car trajectory, must have an illusion that the car does not stop, if the following three conditions are satisfied: (1) the observer measures not the linear but angular speed of the car; (2) the car decelerates and subsequently accelerates relatively fast; and (3) there is a short-time obstruction of the observer’s view of the car by an external object, e.g., another car, at the moment when both cars are near the stop sign.”

I suppose the “cry until the officer lets you off with a warning” defense was not in this guy’s playbook. Impressive, sir.

WRONG NUMBER

I tried to call a friend of mine yesterday to congratulate him on a new job, and ended up dialing the wrong number. He changed phone numbers a while back, and I added the new number to my phonebook without deleting the old one. I dialed the old one, hear a female answer, and apologized, saying, “Oh, sorry I’ve got the wrong number.”

Her response?

In a very snarky tone, “Yeah, you do.” Click.

What???

Is it not commonplace to dial a wrong number? It’s not like I did the thing where you dial the wrong number, and then call that same number again, internally insisting that you couldn’t have been wrong and the phone lines must’ve gotten crossed (because that’s ever happened). No! That was not the case. So I felt a little put off that this stranger was so angrily dismissive of my accidental ring. To whomever you are, I apologize.

That leads me to ask you, the reader, this question: Is there wrong number etiquette? Should we all be forgiving of the misdialed number, or is it OK to have some anger at someone who calls us unnecessarily? I’d like to know.

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